AMBIVALENT LEARNING: GENDERED AND RACIALIZED BARRIERS TO COMPUTER ACCESS FOR IMMIGRANT GARMENT WORKERS1

• Published in: Canadian journal for the study of adult education 2005-11, Vol.19 (2), p.14
• Main Authors: Mirchandani, Kiran, Ng, Roxana, Sangha, Jasjit, Rawlings, Trudy, Coloma-Moya, Nel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Access to Computers; Computer literacy; Educational Opportunities; Job Skills; Learning Activities; Learning Processes; Lifelong Learning; Noncitizens; Studies; Workers
• ISSN: 0835-4944; 1925-993X

The difficulties described above exemplify the many hidden "cultural codes" and prior knowledge with which successful users of computers and the internet need to be familiar.4 Despite the instructor's efforts to make the curriculum basic and easy to follow, these hidden codes ran through the training modules. For example, when the instructor realized that the women were unfamiliar with the use of the mouse, he downloaded a free mouse training exercise from the internet. In this exercise, nine pieces of a jigsaw puzzle were randomly scattered on a screen. The participants were asked to use the mouse to drag pieces into the correct position to complete the picture. As the lesson proceeded and women were having difficulties manipulating the mouse, we realized that this seemingly simple exercise (for us who are familiar with computer use) in fact assumed a high level of comfort as well as physical and manual dexterity with the mouse. Many women had trouble "making sense" of the order in which pieces of the puzzle had to be placed in order to successfully complete the picture. Those who knew that identifying corner pieces would make it easier to fill in the rest of the puzzle found the exercise much simpler. Indeed, Selfe and Selfe (1994) contend that computer interfaces (such as Windows) are themselves embedded in the cultural values of our society. Through these interfaces, "a reality is constituted by and for white middle- and upper-class users to replicate a world that they know and feel comfortable within" (p. 6). For example, features such as the Windows desktop with folders replicate the norms of white collar work and "construct virtual reality...in terms of corporate culture and the values of professionalism" (Selfe and Selfe, 1994, p. 486). In the example of the puzzle exercise described above, women in the course had to engage in two forms of learning at once: learning how to use the mouse, and learning about the teaching tool (the puzzle). We realized that the participants might have found it considerably easier to learn about the mouse if we had developed a tool based on the technologies or cultural norms with which they were already familiar (for example a sewing machine or a pattern of a garment). The lack of such training exercises and tools is symptomatic of the exclusion of the experiences of these and other racialized workers, especially women, in the very design of computers and the internet.